Tuesday, February 4, 2020

REVIEW 763: JAI MUMMY DI

If
you are a fan of director Luv Ranjan’s brand
of visceral misogyny in Pyaar Ka Punchnama 1and2 and Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety, and that is what
you are hoping to get in Jai Mummy Di, then you will be disappointed. This new
film, despite being co-produced by Ranjan, displays a surprising lack of
animosity towards women.

If you saw the trailer of Jai Mummy Di,
were intrigued by the hint of a long-buried lesbian romance and were hoping to
see a film on this still taboo subject, then too you will
be disappointed.

If
the pace and sense of humour you spotted in the trailer left you expecting a
couple of hours of light-hearted fun, again, disappointment awaits
you.

That
is the thing about director Navjot Gulati’s JaiMummyDi. It is not regressive, not progressive, not anything.

Jai Mummy Diis the story of Pinky Bhalla (Poonam
Dhillon) and Laali Khanna (Supriya Pathak Kapoor) who have been sworn enemies
for decades. They are neighbours in a north Delhi locality and their mutual
antagonism is so strong, that their children – Saanjh Bhalla (Sonnalli Seygall) and Puneet Khanna (Sunny Singh) – dare not reveal to the families that
they have been in love since school. When the youngsters realise they cannot live without each other, they set out to find the
root cause of the mothers’ hatred which,they
are told, dates back to their college days. Back then, their common friend
reveals, the two were so thick that they were even rumoured to be girlfriends.

The
first half of Jai Mummy Diis certainly
mildly funny, but the comedy and the film as a whole fizzle out as it
gradually becomes clear that Gulati does not know where to take it. This was also the
problem with that earlier film he wrote, 2017’s Running Shaadistarring Taapsee Pannu and Amit Sadh – there was the
seed of a good idea there, but it got lost on a road to nowhere.

Once Jai Mummy Di starts going round and round in circles, it becomes
limp and purposeless. Dialogues are left hanging, extra seconds hang loose
and it begins to feel like an amateur stage production where the actors don’t
understand poor timing.

Veterans
Pathak Kapoor and Dhillon get to shout and grimace a lot, but for a film that
is supposedly centred around their characters, Jai Mummy Di has precious little about them and
gives them hardly any screen time in the second half. Sunny Singh and
Sonnalli Seygall, both of whom are recognisable from Ranjan’s most famous
films, look dapper and deliver competent even if not sparkling performances.
Singh needs to work on his dialogue delivery though. In several places in
the film I found myself straining my ears to figure out what he had just said
because of his tendency to swallow words or shoot them out too fast.

Possibly
because the Pyaar Ka Punchnamas gained notoriety for theirmisogyny, this screenplay tries to compensate with
occasional moments of overt feminism. Saanjh demands to know why a woman must
follow her husband wherever he goes after marriage, and Puneet does
not disagree. When they hear of the possibility that their mothers were
onceromanticallyinvolved with
each other, they respond with a complete lack of judgement. But these instances
of pointed liberalism add up to nothing when actor Alok Nath surfaces
intermittently in the narrative as a hanger on, and it appears that although
the man has no particular role to play in this film, he has been placed there
as an act of defiance against those who asked why he was cast in Ranjan’s last
production De De Pyaar De despite the
allegations of rape and harassmentthat surfaced against him during the Me Too movement
in 2018, allegations
he responded towith the most bizarre, apathetic non-denial.

His
presence is just a distracting irritant. What really kills
this film is the supposed big reveal in the end about Laali and Pinky’s intense
enmity. It is so poorly conceived and so so ordinary, that you have to wonder
why this plain film was ever made. Seriously, why?

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About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist, journalism teacher and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region. A journalist since 1994, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently reporting and writing for multiple publications on cinema and social issues with a focus on gender concerns. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com, ebay.in, flipkart.com, ombooksinternational.com, ombooks.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad